1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to a method, system and program product for obscuring supplemental web content. Specifically, the present invention allows supplemental web content such as advertisements (e.g., pop-up, banner, etc.) to be reduced in quality so that they are less conspicuous on a web page.
2. Related Art
As use of the World Wide Web becomes more pervasive, Internet-based advertising has become a big business. Many of the advertisements now use attention-getting techniques such as animation, sounds, bright colors, etc. Typically, the advertisements are displayed on web pages requested by end-users. For example, if a user requests a certain web page, the web server will often dynamically generate a markup-language page to serve in response to the request by combining references to one or more advertisements with the content that the user requested. Advertising and other types of inserted supplemental content are generally delivered in the form of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) references within markup language. As is well known, a Uniform Resource Locator (URL) is a specific type of URI. It should be understood that “supplemental content” as used herein can also refer to downloaded fonts, Javascript, Java bytecodes, ActiveX controls, markup language fragments, streaming media, Flash animations, or generally any other type of content that can be embedded in markup language by reference. Typically, the web server serves the markup language document containing such references to the client, and it is the responsibility of the client to request any referenced supplemental content. This is commonly done during the client browser's rendering operation by making a separate request to each web server hosting the supplemental content. Unfortunately, such content can be extremely distracting and annoying to the end-user. This is especially the case since the supplemental content is usually unsolicited. Moreover, supplemental content with advanced features such as animation and sound can consume resources and slow the loading of the pertinent parts of the web page on the client.
Unsolicited advertisements inserted into desired content may often be found on web portal pages. As known, a portal page is generated at a web “portal” server by portal server software (e.g., WebSphere Portal Server™, which is commercially available from International Business Machines Corp. of Armonk, N.Y.). A portal page typically includes sections or visual portlets that each contain certain content formatted according to a user's preferences. For example, a user could establish his/her own portal page that has sections for news, weather and sports. When the portal page is requested, the portal server would obtain the desired content from the appropriate content providers. Once obtained, the content would be aggregated and URI references to advertisements and other supplemental content inserted into the markup language for display in the appropriate sections as a portal web page. This portal technology has lead to the explosion of personalized “home” pages for individual web users.
Currently, many products exist for blocking unwanted supplemental content. These products, sometimes called “ad blockers,” are usually conditioned upon regular expression matching against a list of Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) patterns representing known sources of content to be blocked. The list may also be referred to as a “block list.” Once such content is detected, the current ad blockers either do not retrieve the content referenced by the URI, or retrieve but do not render the content. In either case, the web page displayed to the user may be distorted from what the web designer intended, since the missing content could leave gaps or affect the layout and spacing of the remaining content. Further, if entries in the block list are incorrect, the ad blocker may incorrectly block valid, desired content. This could prevent pertinent content from reaching the users. Even worse, it could prevent a user from ever realizing that pertinent content has been blocked, making it impossible for the user to know that the block list needs to be corrected, and potentially seriously reducing the quality of the web browsing experience.
In view of the foregoing, there exists a need for a method, system and program product for obscuring supplemental web content such as advertisements. Specifically, a need exists for supplemental content to be detected and reduced in quality so that the web page can still be rendered as intended without distracting the user.